AP's Attempt At DRM'ing The News Shuts Down

from the total-failure dept

Plenty of people rightly mocked the news a few years ago that the Associated Press was working on a plan to "DRM the news." The idea was to put some sort of licensing mechanism together to get news aggregators to pay to promote their news. This seemed incredibly dumb for a whole host of reasons. It added no value. Its only purpose was to limit the value for everyone in the system by putting a tollbooth where none needed to exist. When it finally launched last year to great fanfare in the newspaper world, under the name "NewsRight," we pointed out that, once again, it made no sense. Basically, the whole focus appeared to be on getting bloggers and aggregators to pay for a license they legally did not need.

Since the launch... we heard absolutely nothing about NewsRight. There was a launch, with its newspaper backers claiming it was some huge moment for newspapers, and then nothing.

Well, until now, when we find out that NewsRight quietly shut down. Apparently, among its many problems, many of the big name news organization that owned NewsRight wouldn't even include their own works as part of the "license" because they feared cannibalizing revenue from other sources. So, take legacy companies that are backwards looking, combine it with a licensing scheme based on no legal right, a lack of any actual added value and (finally) mix in players who are scared of cannibalizing some cash cow... and it adds up to an easy failure.

Maybe it's because found other ways:

The strategy of advertisers sponsoring or producing content that looks much like traditional editorial content has become increasingly common as publishers try to create more sources of revenue.
There are definitely sponsored articles here at Techdirt! Are all articles sponsored? Can we trust any information in them? Is Mike's editorial policy and all of his sponsors available for scrutiny? Or does it just not matter because, as fanboys hold, Mike is immune from all scrutiny?

And by the way, that's behind an apparently successful paywall.

Another point is that in clearly cheering this "failure" Mike proves himself a freetard, insisting that all content on the net be free, or set free if isn't already.

Whether advertising can support the net -- when much of it is avoidable with a little knowledge -- is an interesting question with huge implications, but Mike devotes most of his time to tearing down copyright, or complaining about trivia.

Hah. People use aggregators like they breathe nowadays. If you aren't there it's not a problem, there are others that are. The real question news outfits should be asking is how to make their content be relevant to the people using those aggregators so they'll choose to give higher priority to your content.

It's about time they move completely online (leaving some higher price printed version for those who are willing to pay for it) and monetize on eyeballs and pre/freemium content.